[HN Gopher] Bonsai in an encapsulated environmental system: Palu...
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Bonsai in an encapsulated environmental system: Paludarium
Yasutoshi
Author : polm23
Score : 103 points
Date : 2021-01-16 11:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (azumamakoto.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (azumamakoto.com)
| pvaldes wrote:
| Too expensive in terms of energy for most homes probably, but I
| could see it perfectly being hired as a tree hospital to recover
| valuable bonsai specimens in urban areas where maintaining and
| finding space for a bigger greenhouse can be complicated
|
| Would be also a good anti-theft device. It looks heavy.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| My first association was
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White, the second
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film)
|
| As in https://cdn.flickeringmyth.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/03/li...
|
| :-)
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Looks really cool. They even play music for the plant!
|
| I'm running several aquariums at home between 17 and 240 litres
| that I try to run with as little intervention as possible, so I'm
| quite interested in self-sustaining minuature "ecosystems". In
| aquariums the plant growth is usually the one thing that requires
| intervention, as some plant species (especially stem plants and
| floating plants) will completely overrun the ecosystem within
| weeks if not trimmed back, and they often will shade the other
| plants causing them to become stunted or die off entirely.
|
| Aquarists or aquascapers (which is a trend that in its modern
| interpretation also originated in Japan) will often take pride in
| being able to grow rare or demanding plant species in their
| tanks. In some cases this can require holding a lot of parameters
| in balance: Light, micro- & macro-nutrients (in the water and in
| the soil), water hardness, PH and temperature.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Fellow aquascapers here! I went from Walstad mode to high-tech
| slow growing plants ADA style. Both are surprisingly low
| maintenance and algae free. I just change the water, do some
| ferts, and feed the fish. I think I can bypass changing the
| water if I want to.
| Vervious wrote:
| It's crazy how much and how little maintenance a high-tech
| aquascape needs. I just got back from a six-week trip and all
| the stems and carpet are completely overgrown, but algae is
| still minimal and the fish and shrimp are none-the-wiser.
| petre wrote:
| What do your shripm and fush eat?algae, dead plants
| exclysively? I'm just changing the water in onne of my low
| tech aquariums as we speak. I have RCS, Boraras and Otos in
| them.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I have been following this movement on YouTube. It looks
| fascinating.
|
| A lot more interesting to me than the bonsai installation. I
| have an aesthetic and a practical concern. Practically pines
| (and many others) naturally have a dormant period over the
| winter, which is amongst the reasons why bonsai live outside.
| Some trees die without it. It also looks like a great
| environment for fungal growth!
|
| Aesthetically this is more like seeing a person on life support
| than seeing them alive. Like bonsai tree in the matrix.
|
| I guess this is just an art installation though, but I hope
| they don't kill the tree.
| qwantim1 wrote:
| My one experiment in setting up a natural ecosystem in a small
| aquarium went horribly wrong, with organic sediment floating
| all around in the tank.
|
| Natural freshwater aquariums that are setup properly look
| beautiful compared to the majority of aquariums for freshwater
| that are just gravel, but setup and water changes take much
| more planning, access to materials, and talent than I found
| that I have.
| christiansakai wrote:
| It has its learning curve for sure, but experimentation +
| reading is key.
| [deleted]
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I only change water at the beginning when setting up a new
| aquarium, once it's stable I do a water change maybe every
| 3-6 months. The small tanks have a lot of evaporation as well
| so every week I add 2-4 litres of fresh water to them, so
| additional water changes are not really needed. If you have a
| large number of healthy plants in the aquarium and enough
| filter surface there's usually no problem with
| nitrate/nitrite buildup. I know people that run their
| aquariums for decades without a water change (replacing
| evaporated water of course), so it's definitely possible. You
| can't agressively use fertilizer though in that case. Most
| aquascapers use "estimative index" fertilization method where
| they usually strongly overdose fertilizer to ensure no plant
| has any nutrient deficiencies, this then makes regular water
| changes necessary as inevitably there will be a buildup of
| organics or nutrients otherwise. Personally I found that with
| most plants you don't need to do that.
|
| In most of my aquariums I also don't use organic soil and
| instead put a combination of volcanic (anorganic) rock and
| gravel. Works quite well for most plants and if you have
| enough fish in the aquarium they will produce almost all
| necessary organics for your plants to thrive.
| studius wrote:
| How would you approach setting up and maintaining the
| following nano-aquascape, with an outcome similar to the
| Walstad method[1][2]:
|
| * freshwater 11.3L natural tank, ranging 9.5L - 11L through
| evaporation
|
| * no powered filtration, aeration, and optimally without a
| water heater
|
| * little if any sunlight
|
| * water temperature in tank may range 18.3C to 24.9C
| through each year
|
| * 1 or more aquatic creatures, preferably one creature
| living a few or more years, removed within a day if they
| die and replaced within 3 weeks
|
| * no water changes after 2-3 months of stabilization
| initially
|
| * no more than a few hours of initial setup
|
| * little maintenance required to sustain itself as
| described other than topping tank with inexpensive bottled
| spring water
|
| * high probability of sustaining itself within these
| constraints for many years
|
| I read and experienced that smaller tanks are harder to
| setup with 10cm of sand possibly needed for Walstad method
| that size tank[3].
|
| In "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium" and on her site,
| Walstad writes that she had success with 3.8L and 7.6L
| tanks using her Dry Start Method[4] to setup the plants,
| and then hosted shrimp. However, as interesting a shrimp
| are, my experience with ghost shrimp was that they were
| inexpensive, looked lively, and then died suddenly within
| weeks. She speaks of red cherry shrimp, which I've not
| found locally. I recommend her site[5] which has a lot of
| information about Planted Aquariums along with the latest
| corrections for her book; she also describes how she bred
| guppies in 12 gallon plastic tubs without any filtration or
| aeration[6] outdoors 15.5C-25.5degF.
|
| [1]- https://amazon.com/dp/B00DB94K5I
|
| [2]- http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/wiki/Walstad_method
|
| [3]- https://www.fishlore.com/aquariumfishforum/threads/set
| ting-u...
|
| [4]- https://dianawalstad.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/shrim
| prcs20...
|
| [5]- https://dianawalstad.com/aquariums/
|
| [6]-
| https://dianawalstad.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/small-
| scale...
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I have a 17L tank that effectively has maybe 10L of
| water, in which I keep small guppies (offspring from my
| larger tanks) until the outgrow it. It's sitting on a
| bookshelf in the hallway, completely unheated. I use a
| regular Philips 13 W 4000 K LED (around 1.500 Lumen)
| mounted in an Ikea desk lamp as lighting. For filtering I
| use a backpack filter (AquaClear) filled with ceramic
| filter material with high surface-to-volume ratio and
| some fine polyester wool. I prefer these types of filters
| for small tanks as they hang outside of the tank and
| dont't use up any space inside.
|
| The most important thing for a healthy aquascape is to
| have many healthy plants, with some fast-growing ones
| that will take up any excess nutrients. For an open tank
| I recommend water lentils (they can get out of control
| fast though) or swim ferns like Limnobium Laevigatum or
| Salvinia Auriculata (beware of the shade they create). In
| my tank I also keep Hydrocotyle Tripartita, which looks
| great in an open tank that can be viewed from above,
| grows fast and forms a nice carpet that doesn't grow too
| high(unless it doesn't get enough light, in which case it
| will grow mostly vertically). I also keep two Echinidorae
| Ocelot, which are really easy and form a dense system of
| roots. Finally, I have some Limnobium Laevigatum as a
| floating plant and a small carpet of Hemianthus
| callitrichoides Cuba (HCC), which is rather complicated
| to keep and requires good CO2 injection (I use a plastic
| bottle with a yeast-sugar mix and a small upturned glas
| bowl in the tank to set CO2 at 25 mg/l). Having some
| root-forming plants is important as the roots will keep
| the ground from becoming anaerobic, which can lead to a
| foul-smelling aquarium. As substrate I use volcanic
| gravel below and regular gravel (2-4mm grain size) above,
| possibly with some nutrient-rich soil above (this will
| help e.g. with HCC but isn't required). For a small tank
| I'd go for 3-5 cm of substrate at most. You can have more
| but you'll need to ensure you have root-forming plants in
| most areas that keep the substrate aereated. I fertilize
| with micro- & macro-nutrient fertilizers every couple of
| days. Lighthing is turned on for 11 hours. I feed the
| fish (12 small, not fully grown guppies) once a day and
| am careful not to overfeed. I also keep 10-20 ramshorn
| snails (they can reproduce quite fast but if you don't
| overfeed your fish their numbers stabilizes quickly).
|
| Sakura shrimp are quite easy to keep as well and will
| reproduce without much effort, larger fish (even fully
| grown Guppies) will see the small ones as food though and
| stress the large ones enough to kill them, so beware of
| putting them in a tank with fish.
|
| In the first 2 weeks you'll see a lot of brown silica
| algae form everywhere, which is normal, usually followed
| by some green algea. Which types of algea you'll get
| depends heavily on your water parameters though
| (hardness, mineral content and contaminants), I have
| hard, nutrient-rich water and get mostly green algea,
| other people see brush or black algea instead. After 4-6
| weeks they should mostly disappear as the plants start to
| grow rapidly and take up most of the nutrients in the
| water, starving the algae.
|
| So to summarize:
|
| - Use lots of healthy plants, at least some of them
| should be fast-growing (you can remove these later if you
| don't like them). There should be as many plants as
| possible, while making sure they don't shade each other.
| Great fast-growing plants are e.g. stem plants like
| Hygrophilia Polysperma, Rotala Gia Lai / H'Ra (one of my
| favorites) or swimming plants like Hydrocotyle
| Leucocephala (which is not very suitable for small tanks
| though IMHO). A great carpet-forming plant is e.g.
| Marsilea Hirsuta, which grows quite well without CO2 and
| low lighting.
|
| - Don't overfertilize in the beginning, start with 25 %
| of the recommended dose and work upwards.
|
| - Start with 8 hours of lighting and work your way up to
| 12 hours during 4-8 weeks.
|
| - Add snails or shrimp after 1-2 weeks and fish after 2-4
| weeks (not too many at once). Be sure to select fish that
| are suitable for nano aquariums (opinions diverge here
| but IMHO you can easily keep e.g. smaller Guppies in a
| nano tank as well).
|
| - If the tank develops a serious algae problem (e.g. blue
| algae) block out all light for 3-4 days, this kills most
| types of algae and can give plants an advantage as soon
| as the lighting comes back.
|
| - Only clean the filter when you notice the flow is
| drastically reduced. Don't wash the filter material with
| hot water or anything, just press it out in a small
| bucket/bowl of water from the aquarium until most of the
| coarse dirt is gone. The filter bacteria are the most
| important part of your tank, so treat them with respect.
|
| - Have patience, the tank will usually look quite ugly
| for the first 4-8 weeks, so don't give up easily.
| petre wrote:
| 10-12L is too small. Get a 20 or a 40L, use aqua soil
| instead of all gravel, heavily plant it, work less. I
| prefer to keep shrimp, boraras some otos and one or two
| clithon snails (one per 20L).
| bloak wrote:
| Apparently the oldest known closed terrarium has been sealed
| since 1972: search for "David Latimer" and "terrarium".
| Apparently they were popular around 1960 so I'm disappointed they
| can't find one that's been going since 1960.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| I'll save you a search: https://biologicperformance.com/sealed-
| bottle-terrarium-gard...
|
| Funnily enough just stumbled across this the other day.
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| This is probably the most interesting thing I have seen in a
| long time. This just seems like something that simply
| shouldn't be possible. I tried looking up more info but most
| of the results are this guy.
|
| Does anyone know if it really is as simple as putting some
| dirt and water in a pot or are there more specific
| requirements for it to work?
| hinoki wrote:
| I saw this sitting in what looked like a brutalist parking spot
| when out Christmas shopping. There was no label or explanation,
| so I thought it was some artwork being moved somewhere. Thanks HN
| for providing an explanation.
|
| Google maps with some more amateur pictures:
| https://goo.gl/maps/yP1XYay2fCKvFEV29
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(page generated 2021-01-17 23:02 UTC)